Page:The Kea, a New Zealand problem (1909).pdf/35

Rh with the birds, the beak and general form are good indications; the female is a more slightly built bird, and the beak is neither so stout nor powerful. There may be some confusion when young birds are encountered, but these can always be identified by the quantity of yellow colouring in the mandibles.

Even the young male bird usually has a more heavily built beak than the adult female.

Like other members of the genus Nestor, individuals vary much in the brilliancy of their tints, and sometimes the variation is so marked as to give them an albino or a yellow appearance. Professor F. W. Haslam, of Christchurch, informed me that he saw in one of the Otago homesteads a stuffed Kea that was more or less an albino.

Sir W. Buller gives the following instance of variation in a specimen procured for him from the interior of Otago:—“Bright canary yellow, with a few red feathers interspersed throughout the plumage; vivid red on the rump and upper tail coverts, as well as under the wings. Such a gorgeous bird has never been seen in the district before.”

In the supplement of his “New Zealand Birds” he says:—“About seventeen years ago a beautiful yellow Kea was obtained in the Wanaka Country in the far south. At the time there was a Government bonus of two shillings per head for Keas, as the bird had been proving very destructive to the sheep. Every man on the station, as a rule, carried with him a fowling piece on his rounds and came home at night with a bagful of beaks, thus adding not inconsiderably to his weekly wages. Thousands of pounds were paid in the course of the year by way of bonus in the Wanaka district alone. The last payment made by my informant was £500 in one lump sum. It can be gathered by this what the destruction of Keas was at that time. In consequence of this persistent slaughter they rapidly grew scarcer, till at length there were so few to be seen that the men at work on the round would not encumber themselves with